Passengers File Lawsuit Against Royal Caribbean for Reckless Jamaican Tour; One Traveler Dead

Eight passengers have filed a lawsuit in a Miami federal court on Monday against Royal Caribbean Cruises for a crash in January last year that left one traveler dead and wounded several others.

The plaintiffs include residents from Illinois, Michigan, Connecticut, North Carolina, and one man from Florida. They are requesting damages and a trail by jury for the “permanent or continuing” injures they sustained that will cause them to suffer “loses and impairments in the future.”

According to the lawsuit, the accident occurred on January 14, 2016, in Falmouth, Jamaica. The passengers were on a five-day cruise from Port Everglades when they disembarked at a port in Jamaica to go on an trip to Dolphin Cove.

The passengers who went on this trip allege that the driver was speeding and “changing lanes frequently,” even after many of them asked him to slow down. The tour operator reportedly assured them by telling them that “the bus driver was driving the way he normally drove,” and that that was the way everyone drove on the island.

The driver then allegedly drove into oncoming traffic in order to pass other vehicles. When he tried to pull the maneuver near a corner with limited visibility, an oncoming truck broadsided the tour bus, forcing the driver to swerve.

The suit states that the plaintiffs were led to believe that the trip was operated by Royal Caribbean, but it was actually organized and operated by a local tour operator called Excursion Entities. Royal Carribean reportedly declined to comment on the case, but the company did release a statement after the incident announcing the death and adding that the ship’s crew members were assisting the other passengers at the hospital.